Free Love

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it”. - Rumi

What are you looking for, right now? What is it that you’re seeking?

Noticing some of my naturally imperfect human-being tendencies, this is one of the most recent and more frequent questions I find I’m asking myself moment to moment. Surrounded by the inexplainable mystical magic of India, I am amongst thousands of soul-seeking travellers – all looking for the answers, for truth, for peace, for betterment. It is the perfect mirror to see yourself completely, and to gently come face to face with everything you’ve been perhaps secretly seeking.

I learnt a beautiful word recently; ‘Ashiyana‘; the sanskrit word for home. Home is a word that at its root, means ‘to come to rest’ or ‘to lay down’. Home is not a place, a thing or a person; it is the rest we have within ourselves when we realise that we have nowhere to go, no “over there” one day in the future. This is what we seek for at the core of it all; we long to return home, to call off the search, to come to rest within ourselves.

Often, we do not realise that we have been seeking until we experience ‘loss.’ Loss can be a painful experience, or it can be a real opportunity for us to open our eyes to what we’ve been holding; realising that we never really needed what we might of thought we did. Yes, we can fall unknowingly into seeking, into searching for what’s ‘missing’ in us. For some people, this can be through money, fame, possessions or success. But when it comes to matters of the heart, many of us are seeking connection, seeking each other.

At some point in our lives, most of us will have the experience of “falling in love”. Suddenly in the presence of another, past and future seem to fall away, the illusion of time disappears, and all that remains is wonder and awe of what is in front of you. It feels like you’ve found what you were looking for, you’ve finally come home, come to rest. But in the deepest truth, we never find love, what really, truthfully happens is that for a moment, our search for love falls away. The seeker doesn’t find what they are looking for, the seeker instead disappears. We simply stop looking for love and the love that has always been there suddenly shows itself. Love is what remains when the illusion of separation between us and another vanishes. “I” do not fall in love with “you“. It is the separation of “I” and “you” that falls away. That’s why it’s called falling in love; the illusion falls away. What’s left is the love that has always been there, but has been neglected in our search for something more.

Separation begins when the mind starts to say “I, as a separate person, love you, another separate person”. You provide the end of my search, the love that I have been looking for. We suddenly and unconsciously place a power on them that they do not have. How completely overwhelming. When we are seeking love, or approval or acceptance or even understanding from another human being, we subtly but inevitably start to hold expectations for them, or try to control, manipulate or please them to keep them from leaving us, from becoming not “mine”. This all comes from our fear of loss; our fear of being alone and “incomplete” again. We never really experience our seeking for love directly, rather we experience the side effects of our search; frustration, anger, tension or pain towards our partner. Often this experience is felt as disconnection from each other. And when we are feeling this, we are likely seeking something from each other. This power we put on others is both unfair and undue. The expectation that another person holds the radical love that we are, is where relationships are the cause so much joy – and also so much pain. Getting honest about what we are truly seeking is the key. And this honesty always starts and ends with ourselves.

Can anyone really give us the love that we seek? Or are we seeking the love, that has always been there in us, in another?

Our relationship conflicts can be an invitation to the deepest growth within ourselves. They will always, always bring to the surface whatever is not being deeply accepted within us . When we get truly honest about what we’ve been seeking, and remember the deep truth of what we are; already totally whole and complete right now, we can finally begin the deepest opening of ourselves. As an image of ourselves trying to come home through each other, we end up manipulating each other and being dishonest. We start performing instead of relating. But as open space, in true intimacy, I am able to communicate honestly and authentically with you. I know that I am already the love I seek, and I know that I do not need you in order to be fully who I am. I know that deep down, I can never truly ‘lose’ you. When we set each other free, we are able to really engage – we can encourage each other to explore, to express who we are, our thoughts and feelings and to be fully ourselves. We no longer see each other’s experiences as a threat to us; ultimately, if somebody leaves us, it does not detract from our eternal completeness.

The communion that we really seek is with life itself. What we seek is what we already are. When we forget this, our love for others becomes conditional. We are so terribly hurt when they do not provide, or withdraw what we expect from them. Is there a love that is not conditional? Is there a love so beautifully open it does not depend on me getting what I want from you? A love that doesn’t need you to change, and is not afraid of getting hurt? A love that loves you as you are exactly in this moment?

It is truly the most loving thing in the world to say to someone, “I don’t need you. I love you but I don’t need you. I enjoy your company, but you do not complete me and if you were to leave, I would still be able to love you, even if there was sadness or pain in the experience of that.”

We must look deeply at the nature of our loving to identify the negative elements of attachment and possessiveness in it and to see how our way of loving, looking and speaking and acting have to change so that true love, compassion and joy can enter. Love is the fragrance of the flower of joy. You cannot love unless you have attained to joy. Unless you have joy, you have nothing to give. When you are radiating joy, when it is vibrating, pulsating around you, when it is in your breath and in your heartbeat, only then can you love truly. Then, you are so full, so overflowing, you need nothing from another person – you only want to give. When we can transform the way we love, we will arrive at a love that is spacious, all-encompassing and beautifully free.

“If you love a flower, don’t pick it up. Because if you pick it up it dies and ceases to be what you love. So if you love a flower, let it be. Love is not about possession. Love is about appreciation”. – Osho

Real love is does not seek. It does not hold terms and conditions, expectations or trade offs. Real love can never be found, kept or lost.

Real love is totally free.

Always love,

Adéle x